Two U.S.-based Wellington portfolio companies acquired

As much as 2013 proved to be a remarkably quiet year for portfolio M&A activity, at least based upon our firm’s 13 year history, it didn’t take long for that to change over the past few weeks. Two of our portfolio companies, from Funds III and IV respectively, have been acquired of late.

The first transaction of 2013 came last month when Philadelphia-based PHD Virtual Technologies, an innovator of virtual backup and disaster recovery assurance solutions, was acquired by Unitrends. Both firms are backed by Insight Venture Partners. You don’t often see two portfolio companies of the same VC fund getting together, but in this case, one plus one will equal three thanks to the management teams involved. PHD was a Fund IV portfolio co. and is the first of that 2012-vintage fund to enter into an M&A deal.

More recently, our first California-based Fund III portfolio company of 2010 was snapped-up by a private equity shop. Telekenex is a business-grade IP service provider with a robust private international IP network. The company helps SMBs and enterprises reduce costs, increase employee productivity and eliminate the expense and complexity of managing legacy PBX and data equipment solutions. Founded in 1994, Telekenex has over 100 employees in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles offices. Telekenex’s VCs included Altos, Industry Ventures and Walden. Mid-market M&A firm D.A. Davidson & Co. of Oregon was on the sell-side, and Brad Gevurtz et al did a fantastic job.

Congrats to everyone involved in both transactions.

MRM